Diaz is one of the 25 Women You Need to Know for 2019. Now in its 13th year, the program is the Tallahassee Democrat's way of honoring women who lead. Look for their profiles during March in print and see videos on tallahassee.com.

She has long wanted to work with people who identify as LGBTQ, especially people like herself who are transgender. So, when she was approached with the opportunity while working as a peer advocate at Big Bend Cares, she felt she could not say no.

Janel Diaz, one of Tallahassee's 2019 25 Women You Need to Know.(Photo: Special to the Democrat)

“But I didn’t have a clue as to what impact it has made on, not only other peoples’ lives, but also mine, too,” she says. “

Diaz hails from Brooklyn, New York, where she was raised primarily by her grandmother in a Pentecostal and Baptist household. At 13, she moved with her family to South Florida and it was there, at the end of her teenage years, that Diaz began performing as a drag queen. But the pressures of a more conservative household and familial obligations required that Diaz put aside her makeup and dresses for a while to raise her three children.

Over the next two decades while raising her family, Diaz stumbled through hardship — she recounts brushes with homelessness, a serious operation for pneumonia and collapsed lungs, and an inner struggle with her own identity.

Six years ago, a friend convinced Diaz to try Tallahassee’s calmer pace and cheaper cost of living. Once here in the capital city, Diaz began to transform.

She embraced her identity as a transgender woman, and again started donning the wigs and makeup and dresses she’d left behind to reinvent the drag queen personality, Vashai Avionce.

As for her work at the CCYS drop-in center, Diaz describes it as a “roll-up-your-sleeves” kind of job. On her first day, Diaz had to break up a fight that started amongst the kids who had come in for help.

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Lil Man, 19 gets his hair cut by Janel Diaz, a counselor at the Capital City Youth Services drop-in center Friday, Jan. 25, 2019. The drop-in center provides a safe space for youth aged 11 to 21 to work on goals, meet with counselors, do laundry and hang out. (Photo: Tori Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat)

“I was sore that weekend,” Diaz says, and laughs.

To the young people in her care, Diaz frequently says, “Don’t rush.”

“Even in adversity, even in tragic times, if you’re getting ready to say something you have no business saying, take a step back and look at your surroundings and observe everything — soak everything in,” Diaz says.

It’s taken a lifetime for her to learn this.

“I think, sometimes in life we try to please everybody else, we try to adjust to everything and everyone instead of taking the time to say, ‘Look, I’m going to do me.’ It’s OK to be selfish when it comes to you,” she says.

Diaz recalls a memory from her own childhood when she would run across the playground with a Barbie doll held aloft.

“I would go to school and I really wouldn’t play with the boys a whole lot. I had my friend-girls,” Diaz says. “I remember that vividly — I used to take each one of my friends’ Barbie dolls and I would run with them across the field and pretend that no one could really see me because I was running so fast. I couldn’t stop running because if I stopped running, they would see me.”

Diaz has finally stopped running.

“I feel right at home here because I’m helping others and, you know, each day is something different,” she says. “I’m guessing that’s what people see in me — they see my love and compassion for other people and it’s infectious.”